She lit every room
with oil and bone,
hung her ribs like chandeliers,
invited him to kneel
in the cathedral
built from her wounds.
Her voice echoed,
like wind through crypts,
soft, but sharpened by survival.
She was still.
Not dormant—
divine.
A storm cloaked in prayer.
But he—
he took the easy way out.
Slipped through a crack in the wall
before the house could speak,
before the pipes could confess,
before the walls could whisper his name
with teeth.
He retreated
the moment the floor moaned with memory,
when the air grew heavy
with the scent of truth.
He called her intense—
when he meant unflinching.
Said it was too much—
when he meant mirrored.
He couldn’t bear to see himself
in the eyes of something sacred.
So he vanished.
Like a match flicked into a dry field.
Left behind a trail
of almost
and smoke.
She didn’t chase.
Didn’t scream.
Only watched
as the silence grew teeth.
She remained
in the house that breathed,
among thorn-curtains and rot velvet,
beneath a ceiling that peeled
like old skin.
And there, she did not crumble.
Some say she became the house—
bones threaded into beam,
blood threading through the copper piping,
her breath,
a hush beneath the floorboards.
Others say
she tore it down with her bare hands—
and built something worse.
Something holy
and full of teeth.
Or perhaps she still waits
in a room with no door,
a hymn in her throat
and blood on her altar,
humming a tune
so old and broken
even the walls dare not echo it.
She, the cathedral.
Lit from within
by the fire he fled.
Not ruined.
Not waiting.
Just watching.
